


in the morning we were promised

by kinnoth



Category: Band of Brothers, The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, i guess this is still technically open if anyone's absolutely BUSTING with a good idea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 02:33:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 13,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinnoth/pseuds/kinnoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Random Speirs/Roe AUs from a 100 prompts meme I started and never finished</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not to be read in any particular order

001. |  Mellow | 002. |  [Eternal](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10482552) | 003. |  Subtle | 004. |  Cheat | 005. |  Transparent  
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
006. |  Believable | 007. |  Repeat | 008. |  Addicted | 009. |  Write | 010. |  Soulful  
011. |  Broken | 012. |  Stop Time | 013. |  Alcohol | 014. |  Pauses | 015. |  [Affront](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/24356241)  
016. |  Run | 017. |  Experience | 018. |  Fatality | 019. |  [Helping Hand](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/24237783) | 020. |  Breeze  
021. |  Get Up | 022. |  Villain | 023. |  [Worst Day](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455393) | 024. |  Bewitching | 025. |  Jubilant  
026. |  [Lazy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/11979998) | 027. |  Obsessive | 028. |  Recoil | 029. |  Vehement | 030. |  Collide  
031. |  On My Mind | 032. |  Mirror | 033. |  Kneel | 034. |  Locked | 035. |  Punch  
036. |  Tight | 037. |  Urban | 038. |  [ Health](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455591) | 039. |  Older | 040. |  Vital  
041. |  Dawn | 042. |  [Lust](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455357) | 043. |  Memorial | 044. |  [Pretend](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455525) | 045. |  Zeal  
046. |  Disaster | 047. |  [Blush](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455492) | 048. |  Nimble | 049. |  Remain | 050. |  Snore  
051. |  Done | 052. |  Justice | 053. |  [Weapon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455558) | 054. |  Tide | 055. |  Accent  
056. |  [Indirect](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10456473) | 057. |  Haze  | 058. |  Puzzle | 059. |  Try Again | 060. |  [Reap](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/24238311)  
061. |  Settle | 062. |  Treat | 063. | [ Notice](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/24238095) | 064. |  Least | 065. |  Exception  
066. |  Rule | 067. |  Correct | 068. |  Harm | 069. |  Strive | 070. |  Temperamental  
071. |  Divided | 072. |  Victory | 073. |  [Delivery](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/24237924) | 074. |  [Ballad](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10456245) | 075. |  All I Ask  
076. |  Fire | 077. |  Lies | 078. |  Stormy | 079. |  Terrible | 080. |  Decay  
081. |  Dramatic | 082. |  [Panic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/10455468) | 083. |  With You | 084. |  Killing | 085. |  Jump  
086. |  Waste | 087. |  Passion | 088. |  Flying | 089. |  Drought | 090. |  Sword  
091. |  Skill | 092. |  Dust | 093. |  Enchant | 094. |  Shadows | 095. |  Powerless  
096. |  _Writer's Choice_ |  097. |  _Writer's Choice_ |  098. |  _Writer's Choice_ |  099. |  _Writer's Choice_ |  100. |  [_Writer's Choice:  
FOCKIN COFFEESHOP_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4589736/chapters/12048974)


	2. Chapter 2

**aanathemaa asked: speirs/roe + 42**

42- lust

Six guys burst through the airlock dragging a body in behind them, anti-radiation mist billowing on their heels. Dr Webster retracts his plasma faceplate first and shouts, “They got us! Can you believe they got us?” The airlock seals behind them and faceplates come off one by one, revealing pale countenances shining with sweat. Nixon takes a quick count of them. Ramirez, Lipton, and Liebgott. Roe and Christenson bringing up the rear. Webster, of course. That makes Speirs the body.

He hops down from the command console. “What the hell happened out there?” he demands. “Why didn’t any of you respond when command ordered a retreat? What the hell happened to your radios?” Dick puts a hand up behind his elbow though, and Nix goes quiet and lets him take over the situation. Sensitive as always, he sends in the medical team waiting in the wings before starting in his own debrief.

“Your comms went dark fifty-four minutes ago, Lieutenant,” Dick says calmly. Lipton’s big round shoulders straighten as he is being addressed. “Your orders were to inspect the damage to the German communication transistors and report straight back. Can you tell me what happened?”

The medics go to relieve Christenson and Roe of their unconscious CO. “I gave him a shot of sphygmic stabiliser; his vitals were all over the place,” Nix hears Roe tell them. His face is pinker than it usually is, Nix notes, and his voice sounds tight and pitched. Speirs must be heavier than he looks. “Careful, all right?” he says, “Watch his head, okay. You got him?”

“Sir,” says Lipton. “The transistor station was abandoned, sir. The enemy let native fauna take over the compound and blocked our comms with signal jammers. Then they dropped some sort of chemical bomb on us when they saw we were inside. It was something we’ve never seen before, sir. Some sort of purple gas. Captain Speirs got the worst of it.”

Nixon interjects, “Why the hell weren’t his filtration systems working?” because Speirs is a weird motherfucker, but he’s usually smart about it.

“He had his helmet cracked by a selachian land beast,” answers Dr Webster, speaking out of turn, but damned if anyone else was gonna offer up that information, Nixon supposes. “Marvellous specimen,” he says, mostly to himself. “Mandible the length of your arm,” he says. Dick gives him a pause to amend himself. “Major, sir,” he adds belatedly. Nix smirks behind a hand. Civvies.

Dick nods. “If the Germans are in cooperation with the local beasts then we’re going to have bigger problems on our hands,” he says aside to Nix. “Do you think we ought to send another exploratory team to confirm?”

“Do we have the manpower?” Nixon asks, scratching the side of his face. “I dunno, Dick, we’ve been at this outpost for months now and I haven’t seen anything that suggests this isn’t all just some big coincidence. The beasts don’t seem to like either of us here. And plus, you know,” he gestures in a sort of apropos flap of his hand, “Colonel Sink is gonna want in on that sort of movement, and you know how he gets with stuff like this.”

“Colonel Sink is gonna have to hear about this regardless–”

“Doc!” someone shouts, and Nix flips away from their conversation, but Webster’s just standing there, same Harvard boy as always-- Ah.

Christenson’s got his arm around Roe, keeping him from falling face first onto the command bay floor. “What’s wrong with him?” Dick asks, circling around with his long antelope legs. He gestures to Nixon and he gets on the comm for another medical team. Roe’s breathing hard; his face is downright purple now, hands scrabbling aimlessly against Dick’s arm.

“He must’ve gotten a wiff of that gas,” Webster says, being of some use for once as he helps lower Roe onto the floor, stabilising his head between his hands. He puts his fingers up against Roe’s pulse. “Heartrate’s going a mile a minute,” he muses. “Feels like a baby catshark.” Less useful.

The medics rush in to take him off their hands. Medical jabbering, lots of “symptomatic”s and “delayed onset”s and “cc”s of this and that. “Jesus, Gene, what’d you get yourself into this time,” Nixon hears one of them mutter. Spina, he thinks. He ought to review his personnel files. Maybe later when he takes his evening drink. He could really use one of those, right about now.

Dick looks grim when they load him up and wheel him away. “Thank you lieutenant,” he says eventually. “You’re dismissed.” Lipton gives them both a quick salute and the guys go off to have their spacesuits decompressed.

“This is gonna be a bureaucratic nightmare,” Nixon quips, and manages to get a short smile out of Dick before he goes off back to winning the war, saving the galaxy, whatever it is he does.

“You’ve got this,” he says encouragingly, and Nix rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, don’t I always,” he mutters, and goes off to find his datapad.

–

“How’s the bureaucratic nightmare coming?” Dick asks as Nixon swings around to greet him.

Nix holds up his flask of whiskey in a sort of salute. “Jolly swell,” he answers, only the slightest bit slurry still. He’s taken refuge in one of the camera control rooms off the bridge. The ship’s been in a bit of a state since the recon team got back. Every member of the detail had eventually be struck down by the gas, resulting in, frankly, an overabudance of rumourmongering and overt pestering of the only intelligence officer present on the ship. 

Not that Nix was telling anyone, but medical seemed to indicate that everybody was in good, stable condition and could be expected to make a full recovery after some rehydration and rest. They were all still quarantined, of course, shut up in separate rooms around the med bay. Doc Sokolov was rather insistent on that fact, though he wouldn’t say why.

Dick nods and leans his ass up against the console. “You’re gonna run dry again, the rate you’re going,” he admonishes, picking up Nix’s flask when he puts it down and shaking it. “You know we’re not getting another supply run til the next solstice.”

Nix shakes his head and downs the rest of the flask just because he can. “Nuh uh,” he says, waggling his finger. “I’ve still got at least two whole bottles left, stashed in your locker. Won’t run out for weeks yet.”

Dick sighs. “So what’s the doc say about the guys in quarantine?” he asks. He picks up Nixon’s datapad and swipes through the report, blue eyes flickering.

“They’re fine,” Nix baas, taking the datapad back and switches it to another screen. “Doc says it was some sort of anti-fauna precaution the Nazis set up,” he summarises. “It’s meant to ward off the beasts or kill them – probably kill them – but it’s not harmful to us. It’s only supposed to produce a –” he scrolls down the page, looking for the exact phrase Sokolov had used “– ‘mild to moderate spintrian effect’.” Drops the datapad back onto the console with a clatter. “God knows what that means, but point is, after a bit of R&R, they’ll be right as rain.”

Dick nods thoughtfully. “You don’t suppose it was the beasts that drove the Germans out of their base, do you?” he asks. In the blue-gray light of four dozen video screens, he looks older and more tired than Nixon likes to see.

Nix shrugs and leans back in his chair. “Hey,” he points out. “What’s it matter if it was the beasts or our propulsion bombs that got them out of there? The important part is they’re gone now, and once we clean up their presence on the main continent, we’ll have taken back four of the six planets in this galaxy. That leaves two planets here and the Daegona System, and that’s it. Hitler’s running out of places to hide faster than a Sarnisian gambler loses coin. That’s not so bad, is it?”

Dick chews on his lip and does not look convinced. “I know they’re just beasts,” he says slowly, “but do you think they know why we’re fighting here? It’s their home, and we’re just raining artillery down on it because Earth has a conflict and it spread to their system.”

Nixon scratches a hand through his hair. “I don’t know if it matters any, but I don’t think we’ve–” He’s interrupted by a loud, extended moan. He freezes. Dick freezes.

“What was…” he says, and Nixon looks down at the console where his datapad had landed. The red ‘mute’ light of the video monitors has gone green. #51A, he reads, medical bay, isolation wing.

He searches it out before Dick can even turn around to face the screens. “Oh dear god,” he says, and his hands scramble on the console.

“What, what is it?” Dick asks, and Nix might be drunk, but he’s also –okay, so no, he’s just drunk. On a good day, it might’ve taken him 10 minutes to figure out which screen to shut off and which video feed to burn, but he’s got no chance with three to fifteen fingers of whiskey sloshing in his belly.

Dick catches an eyeful before Nix even gets close. “Is that…?” he asks, and Nixon is caught between embarrassment and hysteria. He settles on a little bit of both, mostly hysteria though, because this at least a little bit hilarious, even if he weren’t drunk.

It’s Roe. He’s got out of his room somehow, gotten into Speirs’. Hands on the hospital bed guardrails, riding his dick like a champ.

Dick goes red to his roots. “Get Doc Sokolov,” he says. His voice is at least half an octave higher than it usually is. “This isn’t– We can’t–”

“Ron,” wails a tinny voice from the video speaker. “Oh god, si grand, il est si bon–”

Nixon’s gone silent in his laughter, just shaking now, gasping through his tortured breaths. Dick doesn’t speak French, but nothing but the best for Mrs Nixon’s little boy, including weekly lessons from Mademoiselle Dubois until the maid caught them one day practising a bit more than what would be covered in his oral exam.

“At least we know he’s always packing now,” he wheezes. “Wanna check in on the other rooms?”

Dick’s entire head looks as if it’s about ready to explode. “Get the doctor,” he says, and high steps it out of the room.

Nix turns back around, finds the button for the video feed, and goes to shut it off.

“–me donner un baiser, mon amour, je veux que tu me baiser–“

As it turns out, the orgy in room 52 C keeps Sokolov busy til breakfast the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #nazis....IN SPACE  
> #sex pollen: this was all just an extended setup for a sex pollen joke  
> #I AM NOT ASHAMED  
> #ok i kind of am a little  
> #this fic has so many stupid vocabulary jokes in it i feel like i need to provide a dictionary  
> #fuckit you're on your own


	3. Chapter 3

**craevn: speirs, worst day**

He doesn’t need to be awake to know that, when the car pulls into the driveway, something’s wrong. Gene’s up before the front door opens, switches on the lamp before the steps reach the stairs, but he’s still not prepared – doesn’t know why he thought he could be prepared–

“Ron,” Gene says, when he drifts up to the bedroom door like a ghost. “Chéri,” he says, and he crosses the room with silent steps.

Gene reaches for him and Ron unscrews his eyes from their locked middle distance. He blinks, eyebrows furrowed. If Gene didn’t know, he’d say he looked confused. “I’m sorry,” he says, voiceless, as if he’s spent too long breathing as an afterthought. “I had to tell her.”

Gene doesn’t care. Gene wants to hold him. Gene wants to hide his red and sightless eyes until they clear. He wants to set the world alight and watch it while it burns for daring to treat him like this. He wants to peel Mary White from her very bones for daring to treat him like this.

He doesn’t do any of it. Ron holds himself as if he were made of spun glass. He holds himself as if with a single touch, he’d shatter. Gene doesn’t touch him, but he leads him over to the bed anyway, bids him to sit, takes a seat down next to him. Watches his face and the way his mouth pulls into itself, the tightening and slackening of the tendons in his neck. He waits, and eventually, Ron breathes out once, heavily.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He shuts his eyes.

This was never going to be easy. They were never promised easy. Gene has nights when he is tired, mornings when he wonders what it would be like to go through a day without trying, without thinking. He never wishes for easy though, except now. Now he wishes there was something to be done.

“Maybe,” he says without thinking. “Maybe if I –”

Ron seizes his hand. “Don’t,” he says, all of his cut-glass edges burst to the surface. His grip hurts. “Don’t you ever, Gene, do you hear?”

Gene removes his hand delicately. Ron looks at him with the same lidless eyes, so frightened he looks angry. But Gene only leans up against him and folds their hands back together in a more comfortable position. Ron squeezes his palm, and he squeezes back.

“Gene, I’m sorry,” he says, and Gene’s heart wrings.

He drops his face to the hard angle of Ron’s shoulder and feels it give beneath him. Ron’s cheek touches against the top of his head, and a ragged breath rustles his hair. “Stop,” he tells him. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

They stay like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #yeah this one definitely doesn't make sense unless you've read 'mary'  
> #and now for your daily dose of PERIOD FUCKING ACCURATE ANGST


	4. Chapter 4

**redweathertiger asked: doc & snafu, "panic"**

“SNAFU! SNAFU, NO!” Ron hears, two seconds before he’s bowled over into the grass. There’s sky, the next time he blinks, a bright blazing sun, a line of trees and a dust-coloured beast of a dog trying to lick its way inside his nose.

“Oh god,” says that same voice again, bright with fresh horror, as the dog is dragged off his chest and flops over onto its side. “Oh my god, sir, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry – Snafu, bad dog, bad, no – Are you all right?”

Ron sits up carefully. The dog next to him wriggles, feet in the air and tongue lolling about halfway down his cheek. He gives his belly an itch. “Friendly fella, isn’t he?” he says. The dog’s leg kicks him in the shin.

There’s a hand in his face that he takes and he’s hoisted up to his feet. “I’m so sorry,” the man says again, and Ron looks at him properly for the first time. Dark hair, pale face, colour on his nose might the start of a burn. Deep, dark eyes though. Absolutely mortified.

“You’re all right,” Ron says, taking his left earbud and winding up the cable. The other one had fallen in the tussle. Snafu stands up too, tail flapping through the air like a great flag, snorting and sneezing through his grinning face. Ron lets him sniff his hand and gives his ear a scratch. “You should probably keep him on leash though,” he remarks. “Not everybody here likes dogs.”

The man flushes. “I know, I do, he got loose. I’m sorry,” he repeats, and blurts out, “He ain’t my dog.” Ron looks at him, and his flush deepens. “I mean, not technically. He kind of just followed me home one day and I’m not really even a dog person, but I wasn’t going to just turn him out, not for no reason.”

“Hm,” Ron says, and hovers a palm over Snafu’s muzzle. “Sit,” he says calmly, and the dog sits, shuts his mouth, looks up all quiet and expectant like he wants to know what happens next. “Good,” Ron says, and Snafu grins.

The man’s eyes go large. “What did you do?” he asks in an tone that can only be described as complete awe.

One corner of Ron’s lip inches up. “I told him to sit,” he says slyly, and the man’s face goes red for a whole new reason.

“I’m Gene,” he says after a moment, holding out his hand. Ron wipes off his palm on his jogging shorts and takes it.

“Ron,” he says. Gene has a good grip. “There’s a coffee place on the other side of the park, here,” he says before letting go. “They’ll let you keep your dog outside on the patio if you sit with him.”

Gene blinks rapidly but he smiles, one side of his mouth and then the other. Snafu pushes his nose into his hand, as if in encouragement. “Well,” he says, "who am I to turn down a dog-friendly establishment?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #TOTAL CRACK MODERN AU  
> # HIS NAME IS SNAFU BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING DISASTER  
> #in this verse sledge is an incontinent parakeet


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the obligatory harry potter AU

**aanathemaa asked: Speirs/Roe + 047 :D**

**047\. Blush**

It’s not that Babe doesn’t know where he needs to be, it’s just, well. Okay, so maybe he doesn’t know where he needs to be, but that’s fully beside the point. The point is, there are certain things a kid doesn’t need to be exposed to at his age. The point is, he needs to stop walking into rooms without knocking. Even if it is the Room of Requirement, and he could feel Filch breathing down his neck, and he’s pretty sure he dropped the custard tarts sprinting like a madman back to Gryffindor Tower. 

“Did you get them?” Ralph asks when he climbs back through the portrait hole. Muck glares at him balefully when he turns out his pockets and all that’s left are a handful of waddling jellybabies, a sleeve of butter biscuits, and a couple of partially crushed cherry cordials. 

“Huh?” he asks, still not quite fully aware of the implications of his actions.

“Goddamnit, Babe,” Joe complains, rifling through his payload, “you forgot the tarts. What are we supposed to use for 50s without tarts?”

Babe pats himself down with a distracted hand. “Oh,” he says, “uh, here,” and produces a fistful of chocolate Hershey bars he was saving for himself.

“Well, that’ll do, I guess,” Bill mutters. He shuffles the deck. “Texas holdem, all right fellas? No luck potions, mirror spells, and I swear to god, George, if I catch you will another fuckin rabbit’s foot, I’m going to shove it where the sun don’t shine, you hear?”

“Hey, Babe,” Ralph whispers when he takes his seat again while Bill deals. “What’s the matter with you? You look like you just seen a ghost.” He cackles at his own stupid joke. Ralph might be muggleborn like Babe, but even after four years of magical education, he still thinks he’s funny.

“Eh?” Babe says. “Oh.” He picks up his cards. Club two and a six of hearts. What the fuck. “Nothing, man, it’s nothing.”

“You sure? Only your head looks like a smashed tomato, and it’s not just cos of your hair this time.”

Babe elbows him. “Shove off,” he mutters, but he fixes his hair anyway. He’s been trying to grow it out. He heard Kitty Grogan talking about how the Fifth Year girls like their guys shaggy, and Kitty Grogan is hot.

“Hey, Ralph,” he says, finally, casual like, apropos. “You know that one Hufflepuff prefect. Uh, skinny, black hair, talks reaal sloow liiike thiiis?”

“Gene Roe? Uh, yeah,” Ralph says. “I’ve seen him helping out Professor Sprout before Herbology lessons, why?”

Babe goes red again. He can feel it in the way his ears go hot. “I think I just saw him and Speirs together,” he blurts.

Ralph’s face screws like he’s trying not to laugh. “Fuckin Slytherin Speirs? Fuckin beat your head in with a broomstick Speirs?”

Babe changes his cards, gets a four of diamonds and that one Jack of spades that Skip had sat on the last time they played. “You know the one,” he mutters.

“Oi,” says George, overhearing. “What did Bloody fuckin Speirs do now?”

“I heard he sent a hit a Bludger at one of his own chasers once,” Muck says, chiming in. “Just for flying too slow.”

“Nah,” says Bill. “It was cos he missed the winning goal.”

“I heard it was cos he got caught blagging–”

“No, I heard–”

Later that night, with Muck and Skip snoring beside them, Ralph blows out the last candle and asks Babe, “So together, you said? Like, together together, or just…”

Babe turns under his blanket to stare at the patterned overhang of his four poster bed. “All I saw,” he says carefully, “is something that I think was like snogging.”

Ralph hums sagely. “Like, how sure are you? Did you see, you know, stuff? Or just you know, was it mostly the clothes-on kind of deal?”

Babe shakes his head and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes til he sees nothing but stars. “I don’t know, man, it was pretty dark and I didn’t really stick around long enough to find out, yeah?”

Ralph nods. “You know, I think you probably saw wrong,” he concludes. “I mean, it was dark, right? And I’m pretty sure Roe’s dating that French chick, Renee or whatever. And Speirs? Really?” he snorts. “I don’t know that much about this Roe guy, but he’s got to have better taste than that.”

“Yeah,” Babe says, just so they can stop talking about it. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He knows what he saw though, and what he heard. Grasping hands and bare shoulders; low gasps; wet noises. Speirs’ distinctly yellow eyes flashing up at him in the dim candlelight.

Babe doesn’t think Speirs saw him. No, he reassures himself. It was too dark, and he was only there for, like, two seconds, five, maybe. Ten. He might’ve run into a wall on his way out.

At least he doesn’t look all that distinctive, he thinks, drifting off into an uneasy sleep. He’ll probably be fine. 

The next morning, there’s a pillowcase outside the portrait hole. It’s filled with eggy crumbs and smells like dessert. Bill picks it up on his way out so nobody steps on it. “What is it?” asks George, peering over his shoulder.

Bill shrugs. “It’s got a note,” he mentions. He unpins it and reads aloud, “'Weasley, I think you forgot something.’ There’s no signature.” He turns it over. “Weird.”

Babe freezes on the stair, almost tripping Ralph, who was coming down behind him. “Oof, what the hell, Babe?” Ralph complains, moving around him.

“Nothing!” Babe says much too brightly. He yanks his hat down far over his ears til it almost covers his eyes. “Say, do you wanna go into town with me for a haircut this afternoon?”


	6. Chapter 6

**redweathertiger asked: band of bros, spacetoaster/doc, "pretend"**

She had blond hair, blue eyes, and a laugh like a horse. At her full height, she stood eye level to his mouth. She was always looking at his mouth when they spoke. Speirs didn’t quite understand it; it is, perhaps, a female thing, one of many, that he will resign his life to never understanding.

But she alone at the officer’s club had been bold enough – or perhaps emboldened enough – to sidle over to his corner that night. Her gaggle of girlfriends whispered and preened as she slid into the seat next to his, pushed her shoulder up against his arm, and asked him for a drink. Her dress was a pale, cornflower blue and her hair smelled like apricots.

“What’s your name, soldier?” she asked when he obliged, sipping on her Tom Collins through a ludicrously narrow straw.

“Ron,” he said and remembered to smile.

“Captain Ron,” she pronounced, reaching out to fondle his lapel pins, “do I have that right?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m Mary,” she told him, hand to her chest like she needed to specify. “Mary White.”

“Miss Mary,” he said, and for lack of a better gesture, held out his hand. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

She giggled and looked back at her girlfriends, and they giggled, but the fingers she pressed into his palm were cold. That was fine.

She wrote beautifully and often. Her letters were perfumed with the smell of apricots.

She kissed him when he asked her to marry him. On their wedding day, he kissed her back. Her skin felt strange against his, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her softness, but that was perhaps another womanly thing, hard to explain.

Sometimes, though, when the light was low, her eyes were grey like winter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #i think this still makes sense if you haven't read 'mary' but it probably makes more if you did  
> #replacement goldfish syndrome


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fuck context, have some fluff

**#53: weapon**

Ron opens his eyes knowing he must have dreamt. He wouldn’t be awake otherwise; it’s been years since the old wounds last troubled him, longer still the last time he mistook himself for where he was or when. He knows himself to be fortunate in that regard: Gene has dreams that leave him vibrating, shaking alone in the dark til Ron reaches over and stills him.

“Is everything all right?” he’ll ask in the mornings, standing by the sink while Gene shaves. “You can tell me, whatever it is.”

Gene will say, “I’m fine, really,” straining for a smile, soap on his chin, his skin damp. “Don’t worry.” His eyes might drift, but his face stays soft and his voice is warm, and Ron will believe him. He’ll nod, meet Gene’s faintly apologetic gaze in the mirror, dip down to put a brief kiss onto the side of his neck, and hope that is reassurance enough.

Gene has corners of himself that he never offers to share, certain shadows that pass over his face that he’d prefer Ron didn’t see. He is a different man to the kind Ron is – retiring where Ron is forthright, pensive where Ron might act on instinct – but Ron won’t begrudge him his confidence. Every man has a right to his own burdens, however he might choose to carry them, and Ron has long learned that Gene is not nearly as fragile as his bird bones and perpetual pallor might suggest. Gene has in him the kind of steeliness that would put to shame any of Ron’s accolades for recklessness, if tested. They wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Gene. That’s not something Ron’s likely to forget.

It’s what Ron reaches for now, awake alone, with the blue night in their bedroom making him cold, despite the persistent Californian warmth. His hand meets cloth – the same bedsheet thrown over Gene’s body that is coiled around his – and then skin. Gene fusses in his sleep, and Ron’s fingers slide over the peaks and shallows of his hipbones as Gene half-turns to face him.

“Qu'est-ce que c'est?” he says, voice blurry and slow. “Tu es d'accord?” Ron doesn’t understand the specifics, but the sentiment makes it through in the clumsy fingertips that touch up his arm and over his shoulder and settle into the loose cloth at the collar of his shirt.

“Go back to sleep,” Ron replies, because he feels the discomfort easing, that thready lightness of dream fleeing before a solid touch of reality.

“Mm,” Gene mumbles, but shifts towards him nonetheless, moving under his arm til he’s tucked up into him, his breath unfurling across Ron’s clavicle and his mouth making whispers against his neck. His hair scratches, wiry at Ron’s cheek, and he smells only like sleep and warmth, but Ron takes his fill of him, drawing him into the last bit of emptiness in his chest til it’s gone.

Ron’s body is the best testament of his life and the way he has lived. He has had his mettle tested, his spine, his hardness of heart. He has scars for every lesson, brands for every mistake, every failure and success marked and tallied somewhere on his skin. History is made by men like him, wars are waged, nations fall and rise.

Gene isn’t the kind of man Ron is, and it has taken years for Ron to understand that he is not that kind of man either. That is who he thought he was, who might have been, might have stayed. But in this tangle of warmth and limbs, quieting the static in his head with the number of heartbeats to a breath, Ron is the kind of man Gene makes him: the sort who not only lives through peace, but cherishes it. He closes his eyes and dreams without reservation, and that is worth all the history of the world.


	8. Chapter 8

**038\. Health**

He’s gone still by the time Roe gets an arm around him. Perhaps he should’ve been more vigilant, but the day was long, the chill deep, and he is tired. Speirs burns like Louisiana summer, hot to the touch in a way that reaches beneath his skin as he tries to feint away another coughing fit.

“You shouldn’t be out here like this,” Roe tells him, and he feels Speirs’ concession in the way his spine goes soft against his side.

“Yeah, okay.” He lets himself be pulled to his feet, and it says too much for how poorly he is that Roe has to steady him when he sways.

He doesn’t need the hand against his waist though.

“Catch your death like this,” Roe mutters chidingly as he leads his captain over to the medical tent. It’s still early spring, yet, and the dew before it’s morning crunches on the grass. There’s heat beckoning him from somewhere; perhaps it’s the surgeon’s tent, with its lit lamps and wool sheets; perhaps it’s the sun, not yet fully risen.

Perhaps it’s to do with the puff of wry laughter and the arm over his shoulder. “On your watch? Nah,” Speirs huffs, and he leans as if he truly needs it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [hey kids you ready for some sentimental vomit](http://kinnoth.tumblr.com/post/166699962189)

**#74: Ballad**

Gene is singing. That, in it of itself, is no uncommon occurrence; Gene is given to making all sorts of noises: he mumbles in his sleep and sighs as he putters about the house. There is a particular wheeze he makes when he stretches his arms above his head, certain notes he whistles when he spends an afternoon weeding their garden. It has been Ron's privilege to learn them.

Ron has no talent for memory; his present recedes but steadily into the dim and ill-frequented pool of his past. But these shine like trophies. Of the spoils he stole away from the war, Gene is the treasure he least deserves.

The hifi fizzes at the end of one song and scratches into a chorus of trumpets. A woman with a warbling sort of voice starts to sing. Gene’s voice is broader than hers, his enunciation less precise. “ ' _Quand il me prend dans ses bras_ ,' ” he echoes.

Ron hangs the last dishrag up to dry and puts his head in through the doorway. He asks, "Do I know this one?" because the opening strains prick his ears like an old memory, but he has never been good with music.

" _Je vois la vie en rose_ ," remarks Gene when he turns and smiles with the side of his mouth. " _Tu me demandes le même chose chaque fois, mon petit chou_ ," he says. He goes back to organising the bookshelf.

Ron doesn't catch most of that but he crosses the floor between them. Gene leans up against him as Ron loops his hands around his middle. "Always with the damned cabbages," he mutters into the back of Gene’s neck and Gene snickers, a huff of breath nearly lost in the dropped angle of his face.

“It’s Edith Piaf,” he tells him, and Ron looses him long enough for Gene to turn over between his arms. Gene’s fingers skim over the peaks of his shoulders, his clavicles, before tangling into his open collar. “It’s more of ‘that garbly French nonsense’ you like ragging on me about.”

“It is nonsense,” Ron says without much conviction.

Gene butts up against his jaw with the side of his face. “You’re nonsense,” he retorts.

Ron shrugs, picks up one of his hands and hooks it into one of Gene’s. “Fair enough.”

The record crackles and Gene laughs again. It’s a brief sort of vibration that stays in his ribs, but Ron feels expand through his skin, travel through the line of his body and take up residence in the space of Ron’s belly like a fullness.

Ron holds, the pulse of his own blood suddenly confounding and strange, counts and pretends they’re beats of music even though he can’t keep time to save his life. He leans into the warm arch of bone behind Gene’s ear and gathers his calm. “ ' _C’est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie_ ,' ” Gene hums along, peaceably unaware; there’s an up and down beat to the music that he sways to. Ron moves with him like a buoy on gentle water.

“It’s a nice song,” Ron admits after a moment, stepping appropriately when Gene moves lazily to spin him. They fold back together again as Gene pulls on his hand. They mostly avoid one another’s feet.

“Mm,” Gene agrees and steps them forward on the floor.

Ron goes with him because he wants to, presses a kiss into his temple because he wants to. “What’s she saying?”

Gene makes a sort of aborted hiccup of embarrassment, but the creases of his mouth are pleased. “Something about being in love with a man,” he replies.

“Like what?“ They make a slow turn on the carpet and Gene’s eyes seem caught on something caught between them.

It breaks when he drifts forward, returns Ron’s kiss to a spot beneath his eye and hooks his chin over his shoulder. “I ain’t that good with translation, Ron,” he says, a laughing kind of apology in his denial.

Ron moves his hand so that it lays along the back of Gene’s neck. “Tell me anyway.”

“Ahh.” He coughs and swallows and Ron can feel his breath and the bone-deep rumble of his voice when he says, “ 'He’s come into my heart, a part of happiness, and I', um.”

Gene shifts back and peers into a space around Ron’s nose as if it might have the answer, “ ’ _Connais_ ’,” he tells him, “ 'the reason’. Recognise,” he corrects after a moment. “ 'I recognise the reason.’ ”

The song is winding down, the singer’s trilling voice slowing with her trumpets, when Gene tells him, “ 'It’s you for me, and’ ah, 'me for you in life.’ ” He stills with the music, his feet slowing, and Ron lets him bring their shuffling dance to a close.

His fingers are pale and cool where they brush against Ron’s face, even as his eyes stay low as he says, “ 'He said that to me, he promised for life.'”

Ron kisses him then, in the fizz of the hifi’s static, touches his mouth to Gene’s as if he could taste the soft and the quiet of his voice, as if this too, were a thing he could pickpocket away and keep. Gene presses back against him, and when they part, his words are hushed but smiling, “And when I see you, I see my heart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #i will fucking cut anybody who mentions the length of this song  
> #i don't fucking care if it's a 2 minute song  
> #it's a sixteen minute song if i want it to be  
> #MY WORLD MY RULES BITCHES  
> #lemme just get all of my cliches out of the way here in one wet fart  
> #the entire point of this garbage was to make the meta point that a happy roe is a noisy roe and he is silent in his misery  
> #is a schmoopy dance scene representative of relationship dynamics? nooooo who'd be that fucking batshit


	10. Chapter 10

**redweathertiger asked: roe/speirs. "indirect"**

He goes by Robert now: Dr Robert Speirs, all grown up. He takes care of horses in Oregon, helps the ranchers and cowhands look after their cattle and sheep. Gene forgets sometimes, still calls him “Robbie” when he answers his calls, but rarely to his face. Gene doesn’t see as much of him anymore, doesn’t see too much of anyone these days. There are fewer and fewer anyones to see.

Time passes for him now no slower or faster than it had before, but perhaps he’s more impatient now, perhaps he counts the hours and days rather than holding to each moment. Some things change; others don’t. Things move faster than they used to in his memory. People move faster, go places with more urgency, talk as if they’re running out of time. It used to be that theirs was one of six houses on the lake, past a long countryside, surrounded by woods. They cleared most of the trees now, built up suburbs on the farmland.

But the sun still shines silver on the water in the mornings. The floorboard near the kitchen sink still squeaks when he stands on it. Coffee’s still bitter; birds still visit the birdfeed Robbie made and Ron hung up on the porch.

“The kids are gonna be off on spring break next week,” he'd been told down the phone line. “We haven’t seen you in a while,” he’d heard. “Thought it might be nice to come by for a visit. Spend some time on the lake. What do you think, Gene?”

Gene finishes his coffee, rinses his cup in the sink and fills it back up again with water. His hands are always red now, big knuckles sore with age. He takes his pills one at a time, feels them work down his throat in lumps.

He still goes on walks in the morning. The gravel path is asphalt now, but it’s still early enough on a Saturday that there are no bikers to dodge, only a couple of regular joggers who smile at him and wave as they pass him by the water. He’d never really found a joy for running, not even back in the day, had too much of it in the Army, probably, Ron had suggested to him when he’d groused at the cold and the dimly lit sky but had gone with him anyway. Never really picked it up again, after.

The sun’s fully up by the time he rounds back home, heaves himself up the back stairs and checks the time. Robert had said noon.

Gene showers and gets himself dressed. The cat’s brought a chipmunk for him in a night, left by the back door, chewed but uneaten. It’s nowhere to be seen though, so Gene disposes of his gift in a plastic bag and puts out a dish for it when for it decides to come back.

He’d asked Marta to bring out fresh sheets in the extra room, the last time she’d come by, and he goes and checks them again, fiddles with the corner of a sheet before folding it back. He’s got an hour still. Maybe he could read.

He ends up sat on the couch, paging through the funnies. The clock ticks with an ever-present reminder overhead. He reads Family Circus. The words are easier than Garfield.

At 12:10, he hears a car slow and turn into the driveway. Voices outside, and he gets himself up down the hall.

“Watch it, kids, now – Samantha, be nice to your brother–” Gene hears and then he opens the door.

“Grandpa!” comes a chorus of shrill voices. He’s never asked them to call him that, but it makes him smile anyway. Sammy puts her arms around his waist and Charlie, who can’t quite reach, hugs the back of his leg and half of his sister.

Gene hugs them back and picks up Charlie because he’s still small enough to be carried. “My little cabbages,” he calls them because it makes them giggle. He sets the boy down and let him and his sister scurry inside. Their voices sound out from the back of the house, loud as children are.

“Hello, Gene,” says Angela, sweeping her sunglasses into her dark hair and moving in to kiss the side of his face. She smells like washing soap and lilacs. “You’re looking well.”

With Robert, he shakes his hand. His hands are rough. Wide palms, blunt fingers. “Come in, come in,” he tells them, stepping away from the door.

It’s good to have noise in the house again, good to have people in the spaces that just held space for so long. When he falls asleep that night – after having checked on the kids in the living room, after having brought back in the dish of cream the cat hadn’t touched – it’s because he’s tired. It’s good to be tired, he thinks. It’s good to be something when he’d been living out of habit, sleeping out of habit.

He untucks the blanket from the left side of the bed during the night. Folds it back in the morning.

The children love the water, would spend every waking minute splashing through it except Charlie can’t swim yet, still paddling around in his water wings, and Sammy can’t stand it when her toes go “pruny and gross.” In the sun, they go dark like their mother.

“Oh, did you get a cat?” Angela asks him over breakfast when he gets up to put the dish outside the window again. “That’s great,” she says, because she worries, tells Robert that she worries, and he tells Gene.

“Only sometimes,” he admits. She raises an eyebrow. Gene shrugs and smiles, “He comes and goes.”

He comes across Robbie one afternoon, standing in the hall, peering at the pictures on the wall, and it’s almost startling, almost something strange, out of reality until he turns, with his broader face and narrower eyes, says, “I don’t remember this one,” and points, and Gene goes to stand next to him, to look at where he’s pointing. “When was this?”

“Oh,” he says, lifts up the picture frame from its tack and holds it up. “You’ve seen this one. It used to be on the shelf, over there.”

Robert peers over his shoulder. He grew up so tall. “What’s the story?” he asks and Gene smooths his thumb up over the side.

“I think your father missed the timer,” he tells him. “This was at the old house.” He puts the frame back up and straightens it. “Before your mother brought you over, though. Back in ‘51, I reckon.”

“You could tell the kids more stories about Pops,” Robbie suggests. He adjusts the picture at a minute angle that doesn’t actually hold. “They ask me, sometimes, but I don’t know as much as I would’ve liked to know. The wars, for instance–”

Gene blinks slowly in this hallway in the middle of this house he built, on these floorboards he laid in rooms he made to hold more than just himself.

Gene doesn’t remember. That’s not the same as forgetting; he has his history propped up on shelves, displayed in photographs. There are hangers in the closets that no one has touched, certain things placed certain ways that he returns to position after he moves them. He doesn’t need to remember. He is memory.

“I think you knew him well enough,” Gene says, claps him against the shoulder and smiles. “You’re his son, Robbie,” he tells him quietly when Robert frowns. “All his best stories were of you.”

The night before they leave, Sammy and Charlie insist on a cake for Gene, with candles and everything, so the afternoon before, Angela shoos him out of the kitchen. The children make a riotous mess of chocolate and powdered sugar as Gene and Robert sit patiently on the porch, talking about El Niño and what it’ll mean for the price of cattle. The sun sets in golds and purples on the lake, and fireflies begin to flicker out of the woods like floating stars.

An animal pads its way out of the brush, and Robbie asks, “What is that?” He points with the neck of his beer bottle. Gene sits up to see a pair of silver eyes blinking yellow in the dark. “Is that your cat?” he asks and swigs the last of his drink.

Gene settles back down into his chair. “Not today,” he answers, as the cat blinks once more before darting off into the dark.

A shrill call from inside, “Grandpa, cake!” and Angela responds, “Hold still, Charlie, you’ll get flour everywhere –”

Robert stands, long legs stretching. “I’ll go help her,” he says, and excuses himself back inside the house.

Gene sits a moment longer til his family calls him inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #this is obviously not canon to my verse COS EVERYBODY KNOWS GENE DIES FIRST AHAHAHAHAHAHA. AHAHAH. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  
> #circa 1990 or so btw  
> #NO FUCKING GUESSES ABOUT THE FUCKING CAT I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT  
> #it ...uh.. if anyone wants to know.... i'm putting this at about 16 months after speirs kicks it...  
> #also no points for pointing out where ''charlie'' comes from


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> [AWESOME SHIT BY AANATHEMAA](http://aanathemaa.tumblr.com/post/127112942569/speirsroe-mythological-au-based-on-fanfiction). GO FUCKIN LOVE IT. GO.

**aanathemaa asked: IMAGINE UR OTP GETTING IN A FIGHT AND ONE OF THEM YELLING THAT THEY LOVE THE OTHER ONE AND THEN IT GETS REALLY QUIET i live for shit like that**

**(would you consider this for speirs/roe)**

 

**002\. Eternal**

Ares is fire draped in the skin of a man. He moves with the brutality of pure element, the grace of one whose feet have never touched base clay. Golden helmed, golden eyed, his smile is like the sharpened edge of a hook in Eugénios' heart.

Ronáldos, he'd called himself, stepping in to the medics' cliffside shelter one red afternoon, but Eugénios should have known better, should have turned him away. But he'd asked for water and Eugénios -- tired, worn, covered in the lifeblood of a dozen men -- was glad only for something he could provide. He should have guessed with the way his armour shone like sunlight, the great, heavy spear that no mortal man could have borne and kept standing. But it was only after he'd touched him, only after he'd removed his helm and Eugénios had seen his face -- the gleaming mouth, the vivid eyes -- that he'd known, and by then it had been too late.

Eugénios had burned beneath him that night, and in the nights since. Red Ares, bloody Ares; he left his marks in prints like fingertips across his skin, little brands that Eugénios wore like badges in the daytime as he tended to the wounded, the mutilated, the dying. And how he'd burned, waiting for the sunset, waiting for the night.

But everything Ares touches, Ares sets alight.

Outside these walls now. Ten years they've been outside these walls, and Eugénios is Ares' creature, lay in cinders at his feet. He moves like a man, speaks like a man, bleeds like a man, but he has been made hallow by the favour of Olympus, by a god who has sided against the Achaean fight. It is enough. It is enough, and Eugénios asks no questions, tends to his men, does his part, has quelled his despair in prayer and, when that had failed, in the arms of his god.

And then Ascalaphus dies.

The fields burn that day with the grief of war. Holy fire, magic fire, a heat so familiar that Eugénios weeps for the joy he's known from it and the pain as well, for the screams of the dying, the unspeakably maimed. Eugénios weeps until his vision floods and blurs, until his eyes are blinded from beauty, from horror.

He has no more tears left to shed come the night time.

Ronáldos sets his shield by the door, lays his spear down at Eugénios' feet. He is streaked in ichor, and his bright eyes are muted, his golden armour ashened and dull. Eugénios stands him and undresses him, bathes his feet, cleans the battle from his face, his hands. Does not speak to him, can hardly look. Ronáldos catches his face by the chin as Eugénios bends to dampen the cloth. "Beloved," he says in his voice like a thousand voices raised in song. "Will you not console me in this moment of grief? For I have long longed to hear your voice, today, to know the comfort of your embrace."

"My prince," Eugénios says, but he does not raise his eyes. "What can I have to give to one such as thee?"

Ronáldos pulls him into his arms. "Give me your kiss, Eugénios," and Eugénios bends before him is lit aflame once more.

After, upon coarse blankets, Ronáldos draws unseen lines and figures into his skin, remarks with some pause, "You are quiet tonight, beloved."

Eugénios does not move toward him, nor does he pull away. "I am weary, my prince," he says and closes his eyes lest his hatred be seen through the dark.

Ronáldos soothes him with his lips. "Tell me what troubles you," he says.

Fiercely, Eugénios swallows back the beast of anger that roars in his chest. "Death," he says without voice, and Ronáldos laughs.

"That is the lot of your kind, Eugénios," he says. "You are born in the morning of life and you'll end your days in the shadows of my uncle's garden. But perhaps," he considers and turns Eugénios face to him. He ponders with his golden eyes as Eugénios looks and fails to see. "Yes, I think," he resolves. "I will ask Zeus for your life, beloved. And should he agree, you will drink from my cup and come dwell in my realm. And you shall be eternal, untouched by darkness, while I--"

Eugénios rages, "Not my life." Ares' bright eyes catch and blink, and Eugénios amends, "My prince." He says, "It is not my life I fear for."

Ronáldos' mouth flattens then puckers. "Whose life, then?" he asks

"The lives of all men," Eugénios says. His hands fly like white birds. "This war--"

"This war is necessary Eugénios," Eugénios hears, and his heart goes cold within him. Ronáldos says to him, "All wars are necessary. Without war, how can there be struggle? How can there be change--"

In one last, pitched effort, Eugénios cries, "War is Death, Ronáldos. All this death, and what comes of it? Why let all of this killing continue when you could--" Ares' human face has gone still and flat, and Eugénios is afraid in his presence; for the first time, he is cold. But he continues, "Could you not simply end this?" He pleads, "Your son, surely, for his sake, in his memory--"

"I have many sons." And in that moment Ronáldos is no more. Eugénios bows before the great and the ancient, and forgets no longer to whom he speaks. No mere lover, no mere man. The moment fades, but even as his voice returns to its human speech, Ronáldos is no more. "This is my nature." Ares says, "Eugénios. What I do, I do for duty, for love."

Eugénios can no longer feel his heart. "My prince, you are a god," he says with reverence. "The gods love nothing."

Fingers touch his face, and Eugénios nearly forgets. "I love you," says the voice that was his lover's, says the voice that has said this a thousand times and til now had been believed.

"Yes." Eugénios folds his hands away. "But that means nothing, does it?"

"This is my function." It sounds oddly like desperation, so close to reasoning, to pleading, that Eugénios can almost believe it. "Beloved," says Ares, "what can I give you? What do you want?"

Eugénios asks without meaning to receive, "Will you end this war, my prince?"

Is that pain? For it sounds so close, so nearly human. "I can not."

And Eugénios rises from the pallet on the floor. "Then I am your beloved no longer," he says and not a feeling accompanies it. His feet in the dust, cool as the kindly Lethe. "I beg your leave, my prince."

Ares rises behind him. His golden voice trembles. He seizes him, and his hand sears through Eugénios skin. "You will not leave me. You can not. Mortal man," he says, "I am your god."

Eugénios smiles, though the pain of his wrist does not abate. "You are, yes," he says, and Ares is beautiful as fire is beautiful, as the sun. As war. He says, "And the gods are vengeful and jealous. While our lives still beat within us, we are yours to move, to meddle." He steps away toward the door, toward the sea, and Ares lets him go.

"But I shall ask you, my prince, what of death?"

Ares realises his mistake too late. "Eugénios--" he begins.

"I take my leave, my prince." He falls.

There is no body for the mourners, and indeed, there was no time for mourning as the gods abandon the fields of battle and men are left to fight and kill and murder amongst themselves. Hector falls, shortly after, and Achilles joins him, two more heroes to kindle the pyre.

The walls fall and then the city, and afterwards, there are no more battles. And afterwards, there are no more pyres.

There is no funeral fire for the medic Eugénios, one of many lost to the slaughter, save one, a tall, soldier of a man, brass-clad, bright of eye. It is said he lingers on the cliffside, facing the afternoon light. It is said he bears a shield that shines like the sun and a spear too heavy for a man to wield. It is said he burns.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Send a ship and I’ll tell you who:

**026\. Lazy**

Gives nose/forehead kisses 

> Gene, mostly. Ron has a tendency to kiss whatever’s closest/in reach/he lands on. Gene gets a lot of kisses on the chin, ear, eyelid, side of the head. It’s sweet. Gene doesn’t mind.

Gets jealous the most 

> Gene is a little bit jealous. He’s not worried or anything – Ron isn’t the type to step out on him – but he knows how people look at Ron, knows the image he strikes, and he knows the talk that goes around (”Mr Speirs isn’t married? What a shame…”) and it shouldn’t bother him but it does. He wishes it didn’t.

Picks the other up from the bar when they’re too drunk to drive 

> Neither of them are particularly big drinkers but Ron does sometimes forget that

Takes care of on sick days 

> Gene’s got an unexpectedly robust immune system and when he does get sick he’s largely self-sufficient. Ron turns into a child. For somebody who can shrug off multiple bullet wounds, he’s startlingly poorly equipped to handle the common cold.

Drags the other person out into the water on beach day 

> Ron once swam across enemy lines at night to deliver intelligence from the front. He was shot twice; he regards it as one of his fonder memories from the war. But when Robbie asks if he’ll teach him how to swim, he says he doesn’t know how, and stays close to land and listens to the sounds of his son happy and safe in Gene’s hands.

Gives unprompted massages 

> Gene has remarkably strong hands. He knows Ron likes that. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Drives/rides shotgun 

> Gene’s really proud of his truck. He saved for ages and it’s his biggest purchase. They go on drives on the weekends because Gene likes the gentle valleys of the wine country. Ron naps in the passenger seat and scans through new radio stations as the hills roll by

Brings the other lunch at work 

> Ron has a lot of time on his hands after his retirement. He invests some of that time in the kitchen. He has a box of his mother’s old recipes, and he is careful and precise in their preparation. It doesn’t come naturally for him, and he’ll never be a gourmet, but Gene brings back empty tupperware boxes in the afternoon, and he smiles when Ron brings him shepherd’s pie, and that’s good enough.

Has the better parental relationship 

> Gene loves his mother, his sister, his nieces, loves where he comes from. He tells Ron stories of the bayous he grew up in, moss-draped baldcypresses, dust in the backroads. They live too far away to visit very often, and Gene confesses it’s probably best they don’t. Ron is reminded of their privilege here on the coast, the way they live as they do without misgiving. It’s such a small thing, but not. Gene loves where he comes from, but he knows when he’s home.

Tries to start role-playing in bed 

> Gene calls him ‘sir’ once. Ron looks up at him so bewildered he laughs and doesn’t do it again.

Embarrassingly drunk dancer 

> “Sweetheart, you’re drunk,” Ron tells him, but gene leans heavily up against him, swaying to the music, and Ron decides to let him stay there a little while longer.

Breaks the expensive gift rule during Christmas 

> “Ron,” Gene warns, but Ron grins at him, almost shamefaced.
> 
> Robbie jumps up and down, runs towards his father. “Is that a bike?” he hollers.
> 
> They have an agreement with Robbie’s mother about this. “Tacit,” Ron mutters, nudging against him by the shoulder while Robbie waddles up the street, legs akimbo, guiding the handlebars.
> 
> “Gene! Look!” Robbie shouts, and balances on seat for half a moment before tilting and landing on his feet. Gene waves at him. Mary could go boil her head.

Makes the other eat breakfast 

> “I’m leaving now, I’ll see you later.”
> 
> “You ain’t leaving without breakfast again,” Gene insists. “Take an apple at least”
> 
> “I’ll eat at on base.” Ron rushes past him, kisses his ear.
> 
> “You’ll eat garbage.”

Remembers anniversaries 

> Ron comes home with a honey-coloured bottle of bourbon and roses.
> 
> “You ain’t gotta get me flowers,” Gene reminds him, but he takes them anyway and puts them in water.
> 
> “Who says i’m getting you flowers?” Ron comes up behind him and puts his chin over his shoulder, hands around his middle.
> 
> Gene snickers. “Found yourself a newer working model, did you?”
> 
> Ron hums. “Newer, sleeker. More hair.” He kisses the side of Gene’s thinning scalp. Gene tsks at him.
> 
> “Kettle, pot,” he says. He turns and kisses him. “Well i got you chocolate,” he mutters. Ron laughs.

Brings up having kids 

> They have kids :|


	13. Chapter 13

**redweathertiger asked: three sentence fic ask: spacetoaster/doc, a coffeshop lololololol**

 

The girl behind the counter grins and asks, “Milk and sugar, sir?” as she handles – fondles – the lid onto Gene’s coffee, waggling the bottle of 100% unrefined Columbian cane juice with salacious suggestion. “Or are you sweet enough?”

Gene stretches his mouth over his teeth and deposits a dollar into the tip jar. “No thanks,” he says, and stops his eyes from searching into the back kitchen. “Um,” he begins before his better judgement can refrain him, “the usual guy. Is he– Thanks,” he says as he’s handed his coffee. The girl, Serendipitie, winks. Dear lord, there’s a heart twined into the G in his name. Gene simultaneously ignores it and covers it quickly with his hand. He clears his throat. “Is Ron here today?”

“Ron?” Serendipitie asks, and her pierced purple brows cinch in the middle and then resolve. “Ooh, _that_ guy.” She gestures in front of her face. “Sort of,” she pulls a face, squints and frowns with pouted lips, “that?”

Gene blinks rapidly. “So is he–”

“Quit, I think.” She waves. “I dunno, I wasn’t really listening, something about leaving the country–”

“Deployment.” Gene stares down at his hands where his palms are wrapped against the heat of his white paper cup. “Yes, I do recall.”

Serendipitie stares a moment then shrugs. “Anything else I can get for you, sir?”

Gene looks up at her. “Oh, no, thank you, miss.” 

She giggles, “And he says _miss_. But, of course all the cute ones–”

Gene waffles sulkily by the straws, picking up fair trade half and half and organic whole fat free range milk and putting them back down. He should’ve just come in yesterday but he didn’t think… It’s not even a very good present, a joke more than anything, but Ron would’ve probably laughed at it maybe. Gene breathes out forcefully. And now he’s missed him all because he was shy, he supposes. Grown-ass man, and he’s shy about saying goodbye and good luck to his. Friend. Favourite barista. Whatever.

He doesn’t even like this pretentious goddamn coffee.

The door bell jingles behind him as he lets the door shut behind him. It’s damned cold outside and he forgot his scarf and everything is terrible. “Gene?”

Gene startles. He turns too quickly. “Whoa there.” Ron stops Gene’s coffee hand by the wrist before they collide. “Hi,” he says. He’s dressed in his civvies, a brilliantly starched shirt under a crackling plastic jacket; not a taupe apron in sight. 

Ron’s smiling in that way he has, low lidded and with only the corners of his mouth. And his hand is very warm. “Thought I might catch you here, but I didn’t think it’d be literally.” His thumb draws once over Gene’s pulsepoint. Gene feels himself purpling.

“Hi,” he replies, and golly, Ron is a presence, isn’t he, without the counter between them. “Ron. I was just. Oh, I have–” Gene shakes from his grip and shoves his coffee at Ron. “It’s, um,” he searches into his pocket and pulls out the package. “Here. For you.”

Ron’s hand is where he left it, so he presses the box into his palm quickly and steps back. Ron looks down on it, head tilted. It’s not wrapped– maybe Gene should’ve wrapped it. No that would’ve been– It’s not meant to be–

Gene starts, “It’s kinda supposed to be–”

Ron looks up at him. “Is this..?” He holds up his present. 

“Scissors,” Gene says and feels very red and very stupid. Ron turns the box solemnly between his hands. Gene wants to melt into the earth like snow. He shouldn’t have done this. He should’ve just let him go. “You know, cos the first time, I was–”

“I remember.” Oh, he’s smiling. And his eyes. Gene stops chewing on the inside of his mouth, mostly because he forgets. “Thank you,” Ron says. 

Gene’s pulse swells. “There’s also this,” he says before he can think about it, and he misses the mark a bit, and Ron’s mouth isn’t quite as soft as it looks, but his breath is warm where it lets out against Gene’s cheek and when he steps back to look at him, his face is a shade of pink that has nothing to do with the cold. 

“Thank you,” Ron says. Gene laughs and because what the hell else is he going to do about this farcical tragedy, god’s sake, Ron’s leaving on tour in however many days he has left here, and of course Gene hasn’t had the nerve to do anything about this until now, of course.

Ron smiles back at him blithely like he doesn’t know what a hopeless mess this all is. “Do you wanna go grab a coffee or something?” he asks.

Gene blinks at him, gestures, reaches for his cup and begins, “I, um, just–” until Ron’s eyes go large and he finishes for him, “Oh. That’s right–”

“No, it’s ok–”

“Sorry, that was stupid,” he says, and now they’re both stupid and red and it’s still cold, even if Gene doesn’t mind it as much. Ron gives Gene back his coffee. “It’s just that I really like you,” he says. “I was hoping to take you out.”

Gene longs for his scarf, somewhere to hide that big, dumb grin that’s crawling over his face. He ducks his face instead, trying to wrangle it back in. “Yeah,” he says, “we could do that.”


	14. Chapter 14

**019\. Helping Hand**

He has a poet’s hands, long-fingered, fine-boned, with fingertips that taper into dart-shaped points. Perhaps they would have been, had he been born to gentler times, gentler people, but he has never touched poetry, never held it in his hands, never picked up a pen just to feel its weight and carry its words.

He’s used them poorly, stained them with oil, with grease, cracked their nailbeds and ground rough spots into his joints with wear. He’s had them splinted, seen them sprained — he’s been a workman, an oiler, a carpenter’s assistant. He’s used them for use, for practical things, lifting and prying and knocking things into place. He’s split their knuckles on teeth and cracked their palms into cheekbones and chins. He’s brawled with these hands. He’s hurt with these hands.

And then came the war and he holds with these hands. He touches and eases and takes away hurt. His hands become saviours, two points of safety in a minefield of mistrust. His hands become death, the last thing men feel on their skin before their lives flicker out.

And he is skilled at his new work, dutiful and attentive, but his hands are not suited. Their touch is too cold, their fingertips too sharp. They know their craft, swift and certain, but he is no healer, he is no saint. His hands know their craft but sometimes they shake. Sometimes they go brown with the blood of dying men and he will shake. His hands know their craft, but he does not trust them. He does not know. He always doubts.

Gentler times, gentler people. He was given neither, was meant for neither. But, in the harrowing winter one night, another hand finds his. Hard hands, rough hands — hands, too, that are brown with blood — but hands that hold and do not shake.

‘You’re all right,’ says the man whose hands hold his, and together they’re still, together they’re alive. Together they find a space for gentleness, carved into earth, floated on stolen breath. 'I’ve got you,’ says the man.

And side by side, their hands — angels and saviours and death-dealers alike, he thinks, different, he thinks — fitting.  Together, that might be a thing of poetry.


	15. Chapter 15

**anonymous: what if roe dies first?**

73- Delivery

When Speirs goes, it's into snow, drifting in, making footprints, exhaling and watching his own breath come alive. He supposes he must be on patrol except he doesn't remember who he's got with him. Adams, maybe. Miles. He can't remember their faces. And it's too quiet, anyway, no crunch of footsteps behind him, no ominous buzzing in his blood. The sky is bright and blue. The mist seems to have lifted. The trees stand in a line on the end of the woods and there's someone standing on the edge of it, leaning against a birch. "Gene," he says immediately because he would know that figure anywhere. 

Gene lifts his head. "Sir," he says, stands up straight and puts out his cigarette. 

Speirs shifts on his feet. "Gene, you don't have to call me that," he says even though he does, doesn't he? But it's strange even to hear him say it, so Speirs doesn't want him to. Gene smiles and ducks his chin; Speirs' heart pinches to see him, as if it's been long waiting, even though he must have only seen him minutes ago, before he left the FOB. He nods back as he's allowed, shoulders his rifle more firmly under his arm. "Where is everyone else?"

"They're here already." Gene falls in step next to him and when he does, Speirs wants to lean into him, put his arm around his shoulders and hold him to his body. He doesn't, he can't, but he holds out his hand anyway, inexplicably. Gene takes it without hesitation. His smile gains a knowing look. Speirs wants to ask him what it is he knows, but he squeezes his hand instead, gratifying in the way Gene presses back. His fingers are cool and hard. 

"You cold, Gene?" he asks, draws a thumb over the back of them. The sky is vivid, bright enough on the snow to blind. Gene pushes their shoulders together in a brief moment and Speirs catches his eye. 

"Yeah," he says. His eyes are grey like a lifetime of secrets, like a lake in early morning, the silver glinting off his finger. He turns his face. "But that's all right. Winter's almost over."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #what's sad about this is not the whole death thing cos that's whatever  
> #they've both lived long lives   
> #what's actually sad is that when push comes shove comes to images of heaven  
> #motherfuckin speirs' most best moments  
> #his most complete self  
> #his version of happiness  
> #comes from the war


	16. Chapter 16

**063\. Notice**

"Jesus, this fuckin country. First it's cold enough to freeze your balls off, then it's so hot you wanna crawl out of your skin. Fuck this fucking country. Fuck-- hey Luz, what country we in?"

"Belgium, right?"

"Nah, we left Belgium two weeks ago after we crossed the thingy."

"I thought that was Germany."

"We're heading west from Germany, you moron. Jesus, I swear, O'Malley, you couldn't find your ass if you wasn't sitting on it."

"It's O'Keefe.."

"We're _in_ Germany, heading _to_ Austria."

"Thank you, George. Thank you for that pertinent piece of information."

"Christ, Frank, you gonna start with the college words too now?"

"Yeah Frank, leave the college words to Harvard boy over here, he's gotta have something to do. Hey what was that word you said again? Antibent? Antisemite?"

"Antecedent. It means before"

"Ooh, _before_. Right, cos sometimes I forget, you know, 'Hey, what's the opposite of after', 'Oh i know it, it's right on the tip of my tongue, oh right, _antecedent_.'"

"You're full of shit, Liebgott."

"Hey, at least I speak English."

"You speak German. That is literally the point of you."

"Sie scheißen Gesicht haben."

"You can't talk shit to me. I know what you're saying."

"Yeah, that's the point."

"Fuckin, there's a room right there, guys, it's right there."

"Shut up, Babe."

"Yeah, shut up. Hey, you gonna eat that sausage?"

"Keep your hands off my sausage."

"That's not what you said last night."

"That's not what your mother said last night."

"Lieb's mother has a sausage?"

"Hey, Spina, you gonna finish your sausage?"

"Guys, sausage doesn't even sound like a word anymore."

"Your mother doesn't sound like a word anymore."

"Would you-- that doesn't even make sense."

"Fellas."

"Captain Speirs."

"Captain."

"Hello, sir."

"You boys get enough to eat?"

"Yes sir, we're good, thanks."

"How's that elbow, Webster?"

"Patching up nicely, sir."

"Good. Good. Heffron, you over that headcold?"

"Getting there, sir."

"All right. We'll be picking up again at 0950, so get your things together, finish up. You know what to do."

"Yessir."

"Sir."

"Captain."

"You ever get the feeling he doesn't like us a whole lot?"

"Like us? He's not supposed to like us, Babe, he's our CO, that's the point."

"No, no i mean. I bet you he can tell you every man out of action and why and when he's expected to come back, but he wouldn't be able to tell you where any of us are from."

"Yeah, so?"

"I dunno. Lip could tell you that. Lip could tell you how many sisters I got and how old they are."

"Lip's been with us forever. Speirs' only been with us since winter."

"Yeah, but, you know."

"What?"

"Like he doesn't talk to us and stuff."

"He talks to us. Look, he's talking to Doc right now."

"Everybody likes Doc, that don't count."

"Yeah, well, Doc's a likeable kinda guy. Maybe you just gotta be more likeable, Heffron."

"I'm likeable. People like me."

"Is this cos he calls you Heffron?"

"Never mind"

"What's going on?"

"Babe's sore the captain don't call him 'Babe'."

"Aww, Babe."

"Why do I even talk to you?"

"Cos I'm your best buddy and you love me."

"Gerroff me."

"He might just have your names mixed up."

"Huh?"

"Well, you know Captain Speirs. Never forgets a face unless he never learned it right. Keeps calling O'Shea here 'O'Shaughnessy' --"

("It's O'Keefe.")

"--cos Christianson was telling me the other day he thought he heard Speirs call doc 'Babe' once. Maybe he's got the two of you mixed up."

"Well that's stupid. We don't look nothing alike. And Doc's 'Doc', always has been.

"Can't account for common sense."

"I guess. He's a bit weird though"

"We're all a bit weird. We're paratroopers. Wouldn't be here unless we was all missing a couple screws to our hardware shops."

"Yeah, ok."

"Good kid. Now eat your sausage before Liebgott gets to it."

"Hey, I'm good, I had Webster's."

"Aww, gross, Lieb, don't tell us that."

"Jesus fucking Christ. stop laughing, you're the one who started this stupid joke."

"I don't get it, what's the joke?"

"Never mind, O'Neill, you wouldn't get it."

"....It's O'Keefe.."


	17. Chapter 17

**060\. Reap**

Snafu’s dad was Cajun but his ma’s only half. Dad died in an accident and ma couldn’t work and keep a kid, so she eventually fucked off, left him with his Creole grandmother who raised him up the rest of the way. He was seven. Consequently, he can do a bit of Cajun French but he’s much more comfortable with Creole.

He’s got cousins coming out of his ears but no siblings. His ma was his gran’s youngest and so he’s the youngest of the bunch by several years and the runt of the littrer to boot. He had bad ear infections every summer for the first ten years of his life and it affected his hearing and therefore his speech acquisition. His cousins made fun of him for sounding stupid and slurry. His soubriquet was ‘slow Merry’.

He got to about the fourth grade before he stopped going to school. It was hard to get there anyway, two miles out both ways. He knows his numbers and he knows (basically) how to read. These aren't things that bother him too much.

He started out making money bringing lunch out to the oilers and mechanics with Gran. Then he went by himself after Gran's hip started acting up, and she couldn't walk as far. He went to work as soon as he got big enough. He cycled through eight or nine jobs in a span of a couple years, picking up whatever was hiring at the time. Now he knows a bit of everything.

Gran got the nervous fever when he was nineteen. He left two weeks after her funeral and joined the Marines.

-

Speirs' family is comfortably middle class. His parents are Scottish, but he grew up stateside, so he only ever really lapses into an accent when talking to them at home. 

While not particularly well-off, he spent a good number of years at boarding school. He was a mediocre student, not really excelling in anything except for anatomy and art. He has an oddly precise eye for proportion and detail, but it's not something he takes any gratification from. His pictures are exact but soulless. He's not an artist.

He had a teenaged boy's natural athleticism without really standing out in that regard either. He ran track without ever placing higher than 3rd. He was roguishly handsome enough to inspire a respectable string of girlfriends, but too serious and straightfoward to ever keep them for very long. Teachers would have described him as earnest and polite but would've made margin notes that he needs to smile more.

He was always going to join the military. There was never any question of that. He went in straight out of school and was already there when the war started up.

-

Sledge's past is sweet as cream. He was a summer baby, born at home on a bright morning after an uneventful labour to a mama with child-bearing hips. His father had delivered his brother and then him. his infancy was fat and warm and full of lace, but he wasn't naturally a strong child, catching sicknesses and taking longer to recover from them than other children. His father sent him outdoors to try to fortify him. He's not built quite as solidly as his brother, though, and being younger, ran into more trouble trying to keep up. He had his fair share of bumps and bruises, sprained an ankle or two. Mama was always telling Edward that he needed to be gentler with the baby.

He did exceedingly well in school for the most part. His best subjects were religion and literature. He has a lovely mellow singing voice, put to use in the church choir. He was always a bit too shy and ginger and gangly to be very popular with the girls, but he was best friends with Sidney, who was a golden beacon of a boy, so he his fair share of awkward kisses and fumbled handholding. He's virgin when he goes into the Marines, and he manages to keep it all the way through the war.

He could've been an officer, but he deliberately flunked out along with half his class, afraid he was going to miss the war. trufax

-

Roe grew up in the northern prairies of Arcadiana. He's got an older sister and a younger one who died when she was two and he was five. Measles. Pa started getting sick when he was eight, had to stop working when he was nine. It was cancer, though no one talked to him about it at the time. He was too young. His sister left school to help out with the money situation, and then after Pa died, he became "man of the house". He stopped going to school. He was almost eleven.

Angry and bored and with no one with the time to control him, he got into a lot of fights as a kid. He did not make life easy for his ma. His grandparents offered to take him in. Grandpa taught him religion; grandma taught him how to talk to god. Grandma couldn't read and Grandpa had more or less lost his sight to cataracts, so he learned his catechism himself. It would remain the only reading he'd done til he started reading newspapers years later.

With a sufficient and consistent attention, he straightened out by his mid teens, went to work. He learned machinery mostly, did some mechanic work, some lumber. He never had too many friends, and he never had too much ambition, but when the war started, everyone joined up, so he did too. He chose the airborne because no one else was going into it, and he didn't really want to go to war with the sorts he knew. He got picked to be a medic by random draw.


	18. Chapter 18

**aanathemaa asked: ◉ speirs/roe jealousy headcanon :') they're too confident they need their shit a bit fucked over. also let's not make this a reason for me to cry. let's keep it light, alright? i'm just looking for a good reading thanks lol. nah i'm jk do what u gotta do**

 

**015\. Affront**

Ron puts up with Shelton. He doesn’t like him. Shelton is a careless person, sloppy in his personality, in his manner; irresponsible. But he’s Gene’s brother – not by blood, either shared or shed – but a brother nonetheless. Ron reminds himself of that, reminds himself that there is love between brothers, affection. And that when Shelton throws his arm over gene or messes his hair or puts his mouth up against his ear to speak, as if they’re sharing some secret, it’s because Shelton is a careless person, sloppy in his personality. He doesn’t mean anything by it, Ron reminds himself, and even if he did, he knows Gene; Gene wouldn’t let him mean anything by it. 

It’s still a relief when he leaves though, and Ron will throw his arm over Gene’s shoulder, put his hand through his hair, kiss his ear and his face and wherever else he likes. Because that’s his privilege. Because he is not a brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #the verse where speirs and roe move out to california and snafu sometimes washes up on their doorstep  
> #as he navigates the storm of his life


End file.
